COSTNER STEPS INTO 'SEAN CONNERY ROLE'COMPARES PLAYING MENTOR IN NEW 'JACK RYAN' FILM TO CONNERY'S IN 'THE UNTOUCHABLES'Kevin Costner, Kenneth Branagh, and Chris Pine conducted a press conference recently for Branagh's new film, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, wherin Costner talked a lot about Sean Connery's role as mentor in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, and how that informed Costner's own mentorship role to Pine's Jack Ryan in the new film. ScreenCrave's Damon Houx has a good transcription of the press conference. Here are the related Costner excerpts:

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Kevin, you were originally going to play Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October. I was wondering if you were already well versed by the time you came in to play the mentor role to Jack in this film?

Kevin Costner: The mentor role is always that ‘what can you offer a younger man, what can you offer a younger woman.’ That thing is in your level of experience, and so that by definition is the mentor if you have a level of experience. If you read it on paper, that’s the role that was meant for me. It was inhabited perfectly. Chris did his role, and what I liked about it was that I wasn’t just a person at a desk on a phone going, “Get the hell out of there. What the hell are you doing? Well, you need to do it faster.” Kenneth was able to say, “Wait a second. I want to incorporate some of your skill set into this where even though I’m a stupid-visor (laughs), if you would, a supervisor here, that I could take the gloves off so to speak and become involved and bring a physical presence and team up with him at the right moment. I thought that was unusual for the mentor role. Usually they’re back in Washington or they’re in a big, giant control room. In this instance, we were always fairly close together and trying to sort it out a little bit together. And, as the movie progresses, you see that he just possesses a lot of intuitive skills, whether it’s being out of set, how to survive or to process a lot of information in a very quick way, which I actually asked him a couple of times to slow down, remembering that I’m in another century. (Laughter)

...

Mr. Costner, at the end of the film, you refer to Jack Ryan as something of a Boy Scout, which reminds me of a number of your most famous roles, perhaps specifically Elliot Ness. I was curious how does it feel to suddenly step into the Sean Connery role?

Kevin Costner: I think the smarter directors do this a lot of times. They’ll take a supporting role and they’ll put a leading man in it because they either know how to inhabit the screen or inhabit it and nowhere was it better than when Sean Connery came in and played the little Irish street cop and you realized how formidable he was. I remember telling Sean at the time, I said, “Sean, this has got enough meat on the bone that you could win the Academy Award.” And Brian (De Palma) could have easily cast any character actor to bring up that Irish brogue or whatever that you would do, but he said no. He went arguably to the biggest star, the biggest star I’ve ever worked with in my life as I think Sean Connery was, to play this. And I think what happens is then he just knows how to hold onto the screen. And so, I have a feeling that that might have been swirling around in this genius’ head over there with what he wanted to do with William Harper.

I love the way you talked about your character and that he was a mentor. Was it easier to mentor in 1984 than in 2014? Was 1984 an easier time for an old shoe to tell a new shoe what to do and what the pitfalls were?

Kenneth Branagh: I think if there’s openness of communication, then the timing doesn’t really matter. And sometimes the mentoring doesn’t really happen directly. It just happens intuitively. I certainly found that working with Kevin on this. There were a lot of things that went on. I was so grateful to have a master director on the set. There are just lots of moments where effortless…not advice…nothing so sort of obvious as advice, but just shared communication about things, a conversation about how a moment in a scene might go or how things might be approached which just came out of an honest collaboration.

If that honesty of communication exists, whether it’s 1984 or 2014, I think it’s quite marvelous actually. And watching these two together was great as well in terms of just when people trust each other and when they’re very good at what they do and when their egos are at the service of the better idea and what is right for the scene. When you see that kind of generosity at work, it really is a thrilling thing to be part of and actually that cuts across age. It doesn’t mean old or younger. I’ve learned a lot from people much younger than me as well as people much older than me. So I think it’s about honesty and generosity, and we were lucky to be in an atmosphere on this project across this table as it were where that was at work.

Who was your greatest mentor?

Kenneth Branagh: My greatest mentor was the guy who was the principal of the drama school I attended. For the first six or seven pictures I made, he was on the movie as the acting coach. To give you a quick example of what he did for me, he was a very sensitive English guy. We were making a film of Hamlet. I was doing the To Be or Not To Be soliloquy. I was very nervous. I said to him that day, “Look, this is the acting Olympics here. I’m doing the most famous speech in Western dramatic literature. If you have any notes for me, I’d like them very early on, please.” So we started doing it. I did Take 1. I said, “How was that?” and he said, “I don’t have anything to say.” I did Take 2 and Take 3 and he did not have anything to say. I said, “Look, I think I’m getting it. I’m going to call this a print very shortly.” He said, “I think you should do another one.” I said, “Do you have anything to say?” He said, “Not at the moment.” So we get to Take 6 and I said, “Hugh, I think we might have it. Do you have anything to say?” He said, “Well, yes, yes, yes. The rhythm of it, absolutely extraordinary. The understanding of the language, fantastic. The pacing of it, marvelous. The timing of it, really extraordinary.” I said, “What’s the problem?” He said, “I simply don’t believe a word you’re saying. I would have absolutely no sense of the man. It’s safe. It’s acting. It’s showing off. You really have to do another one.” So a guy with those balls that close to me, it was very helpful. He was my greatest mentor.

What about you, Kevin? Who was your greatest mentor?

Kevin Costner: I tell you, I think an honest exchange is never out of mode, and it will be just as practical in 1984 as in the year that we’re dealing with. This is a business that’s pretty interesting. Unlike a lot of businesses, you get up in the morning and you have breakfast with the people you work with all day. You have lunch with them and you have dinner with them. The nature of acting, if you think you put three minutes of film in the can a day, that means you’re spending an enormous amount of hours getting to talk about people’s lives and their families. There are a lot of things that go on, on a set.

In terms of mentorship, it was probably Sean. He was a leading man. He carries himself as a man. I remember a big scene with De Niro and everybody, and we were all talking, and he finally told me, (mimicking Connery’s accent) “Mr. Ness.” I said, “What?” He said, “Sit down.” And I said, “Sit down right now?” And he said, “Yes. Just sit. It’s going to be a long day.” He just talked about not artsy fartsy stuff. He talked about sometimes just practical shit, like “It’s going to be a long day. Sit down. You and I are going to sit here and we’re going to watch, and when it’s our turn, we’re ready.” So, what better advice could one man give another on something so practical that I hate to use.

DEL TORO INTERVIEWS PAUL WILLIAMSFOR ARROW'S 'PHANTOM' BLU-RAY; COMPLETE SPECS REVEALEDThe not so bad news is that Arrow Video's Blu-ray release of Brian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise has been delayed one week, to February 24th. The wonderfully awesome news is that the reason for the delay, according to The Swan Archives' News page, is because a 72-minute interview between Paul Williams and Phantom-fan Guillermo del Toro had to be delayed, and was finally shot "just a couple weeks ago on location at del Toro's man-cave," according to the Principal Archivist. "In addition to that brand new interview," reports the Archivist, "the extras on the Arrow disk will include a new featurette (scripted by our Principal Archivist, and utilizing our Swan Song Fiasco footage) discussing the last minute changes made to the film as a result of the claims brought by Peter Grant, which you can read more about, if you're so inclined, on our Swan Song Fiasco page. The disc will also feature all of our collection of deleted footage and outtakes, run together from beginning to end, available for the first time in a hi def transfer (which Arrow made directly from our archival camera negatives and interpositives). Arrow has licensed Deborah Znaty's terrific "Paradise Regained" featurette, which was first released on the Opening DVD in 2006, the "Carte Blanche" interview with costume designer Rosanna Norton, and William Finley's faux advertisement for the Phantom action figure, also from the Opening disc. Arrow is also using Randy Black's backstage photographs (which Mr. Black had unearthed specifically for the Swan Archives a few years ago, and which appear in lower resolution on our Production page). And, the collector's booklet that accompanies the disk contains some writings by our Principal Archivist, as well as new writing on the film by festival programmer Michael Blyth. In addition to our deleted footage, Arrow borrowed our radio spots, and will be stocking the release with the original trailers as well. In terms of technical features, the disc will showcase the film in 1080p with the original uncompressed stereo soundtrack (PCM) and a 4.0 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, as well as, for the first time anywhere, an isolated music and effects soundtrack (so that you can hear the incidental music without dialogue playing over it!)."

The rest of the Archivist's news post is worth reading for its details about how the Archivist was holding on to the outtakes and deleted scenes, in the hopes they could be used for a special edition just like this. "We attempted on numerous occasions to get in touch with Criterion," states the Archivist, "but they never responded. We made sure that both Brian De Palma and (Phantom editor) Paul Hirsch knew that we had the footage. We told Mr. De Palma that we'd be happy to deliver it to him should he so request; he told us that we should just hang on to it, and that the materials were better off in the Archives' hands. Mr. Hirsch told us that if anyone wanted to try to restore the film using our footage, he'd be happy to help."

Here are the complete specs for Arrow's Phantom, as posted at Blu-ray.com:

Special Features:

High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of the feature, available in the UK for the first time!

Original uncompressed Stereo PCM / 4.0 DTS-HD Master Audio options

Isolated Music and Effects soundtrack

Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired

Paradise Regained – A 50 minute documentary on the making of the film featuring director Brian De Palma, producer Ed Pressman, the late star William Finley, star and composer Paul Williams, co-stars Jessica Harper and Gerrit Graham and more!

Guillermo Del Toro interviews Paul Williams (72 mins, 2014)

The Swan Song Fiasco: A new video piece exploring the changes made to the film in post-production

Archive interview with costume designer Rosanna Norton

William Finley on the Phantom doll!

Paradise Lost and Found: Alternate takes and bloopers from the cutting room floor

Collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by festival programmer Michael Blyth and an exploration of the film's troubled marketing history by Ari Kahan, curator of SwanArchives.org, illustrated with original stills and promotional material

'SISTERS' IS A 'FURIOUS WASP'S NEST OF A WORK'"IS IT OKAY TO WATCH THIS?"Brian De Palma's Sisters screened in Chicago last night as part of Doc Films' De Palma Retrospective, running Wednesdays through March at the University of Chicago. Cine-File included the screenings (it was shown twice) in the "Crucial Viewing" portion of its weekly guide to alternative cinema. Contributor Kian Bergstrom wrote very enthusiastically about the film:

"After a decade in training," Bergstrom begins, "making movies that are variously interesting (GREETINGS, THE RESPONSIVE EYE), fascinating (HI, MOM!, MURDER A LA MOD), or catastrophic (GET TO KNOW YOUR RABBIT), De Palma burst into artistic maturity with this astonishingly accomplished and subtle masterpiece. It marks the moment De Palma went from being the geekiest of the American New Wave brats to simply the greatest American filmmaker working, a title he's maintained with an almost unbroken string of subsequent wonders. Like many of De Palma's films, SISTERS is antagonistic towards its audience, barraging us with images of brutality, damaged bodies, damaged people, pushing us uncomfortably interrogating us at all times to defend our continual decision to keep watching. It is as though every segment were structured around a question, asked of the audience, as to whether the upcoming visual offense would finally prove to be too much for us to justify. Is it OK to watch this? would be film's ideal motto, with the emphasis on the question mark. At its heart are the Blanchion twins (in a disarming and mesmerizing performance by Margot Kidder), conjoined at birth but surgically cloven from one another as young women. A young model in New York, Danielle picks up a fellow game show contestant, only to find her erotic trajectory frustrated by her astonishingly creepy ex-husband, Emil. Eluding Emil, the amorous couple finds their way into bed together with the casual revelation that the next day will be Danielle's birthday. But that birthday brings with it not joy but murder as Dominique, the evil twin of sweet-natured Danielle takes control of the narrative. As always with De Palma, though, there's much more at play than there seems. Quick as a knife-strike, he introduces the real main character, Jennifer Salt's Grace Collier, a combative investigative journalist whose apartment overlooks the twins' abode. Desperate to discover who her strange neighbors really are, and what they really did with the body she saw killed there, Grace and a private detective pry into the history of the Blanchions, only to discover that peering to closely into their lives threatens indeed their own very existences. SISTERS moves rapidly through a succession of set-pieces, each extraordinary in stylization, exacting in execution, and monstrous in implication: invasions of privacy, hypnotism, madness, and horrifying errors of judgment. This is a film troubled by doubles, by two detectives, by two policemen, by twins, and also by duplication: the duplication of a person when death strikes, the duplication of an image by the television screen, the duplication of cells within a woman's womb, the duplication of space by the split screen. Many critics of De Palma see him as working in hermetic structures, narratives so precise and specifically and idiosyncratically realized that his films are comprehensible only when we understand them to be entries in grand artistic conversations with his inspirations (Hitchcock, Hawks, Lang, Welles). They miss so much: the nausea the film expresses towards the casual misogyny and power of the mysterious Emil; the fragility of the social world, as easily ripped to shreds as a Grace's thin shirt; the arbitrariness of the normal, broken and shattered by the slightest action. SISTERS is no insular work, pillaging all its best ideas from Hollywood's graying masters, but a living, beating, furious wasp's nest of a work, stable at a distance, but ready to explode with the slightest touch."

NEW TORNATORE FILM COMPARED TO DE PALMA'OBSESSION' & 'FEMME FATALE' MENTIONED, AS WELL AS HITCHCOCK

OregonLive's Jeff Baker yesterday reviewed Giuseppe Tornatore's The Best Offer, which opens Friday in Oregon. Baker notes that this is Tornatore's first all-English film. "The movie, shot in Trieste and Prague, looks great and has a soaring score by Ennio Morricone," says Baker. "It wants badly to be a sophisticated Euro-thriller in the Hitchcock tradition. It ends up as a lame Brian De Palma knockoff, more Femme Fatale than Blow Out. The plot twists are telegraphed from one end of the villa to the other, and if you somehow missed something, Tornatore signals it with portentous dialogue or shows it in a flashback." Well, if we happen to love De Palma's Femme Fatale, will we love this movie?

The Chicago Tribune's Gary Goldstein states that "Although writer-director Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso, Everybody's Fine) certainly puts his own stamp on the intriguing art-world thriller The Best Offer, there's an effective dash of Hitchcock and even a soupcon of 1970s-era De Palma (remember Obsession?) tossed in for good measure."

'PHANTOM' RERELEASE IN FRANCE FEB. 26AND JANUARY SCREENINGS IN NASHVILLE & CHICAGOBrian De Palma's Phantom Of The Paradise, which turns 40 this year, is part of the January line-up at Nashville's Cult Fiction Underground, a theater and lounge located in the basement of Logue’s Black Raven Emporium, according to Nashville Scene's Randy Fox. The film will play there on Saturday, January 18th. Meanwhile, according to The Swan Archives, Phantom Of The Paradise will get a theatrical rerelease in France beginning February 26th, courtesy of Solaris Distribution. Watch the trailer for the French rerelease at the Swan Archives news page. As noted two weeks ago, Phantom Of The Paradise will be screened in DCP as part of Doc Films' De Palma Retrospective in Chicago, which started this week. Phantom screens there January 22nd.

Martin also compiled the year's "Ten Best Confrontations" for Fandor's Keyframe blog, and again included Passion, writing, "One occasionally reads nonsense on the order of: 'Brian De Palma is not a director of actors.' The wonderful 'kissing confrontation' in Passion between Christine (Rachel McAdams) and her assistant’s assistant Dani (Karoline Herfurth), undoubtedly improved by the actors from what was in the script, proves otherwise: McAdams’ mock outrage as she rips her shirt open and begins to imagine her sexual harassment complaint–having just forced a kiss onto the (at this stage) helpless minion–is an hilarious expression of the power relations elsewhere expressed, in a much darker key, by the film."

Sergio Angelini (British Universities Film & Video Council)

Blue JasmineBrokenHyde Park On HudsonPassionRigor Mortis

"Brian De Palma refashioned Alain Corneau's Love Crimes into the criminally neglected Passion, a sly and inventive take on narcissism in the PR industry that includes a typically audacious use of split screen."

Matthew Thrift (Critic)

Norte, The End Of History12 Years A SlaveTo The WonderIt's Such A Beautiful DayPassion

"Brian De Palma's remake of the 2010 French thriller Love Crime—detailing the increasingly brutal attempts by co-workers Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace to climb the corporate ladder—wass a sexy and stylish knockout of a film and his finest and most consistent work since his 2002 masterpiece Femme Fatale. Darkly funny, breathlessly exciting and teasingly erotic in equal measure, this was the work of a master director firing on all cylinders and the end results put most other contemporary movies of its type to shame."

"Brian De Palma took a few years off after The Black Dahlia – that lazy shrug of a film. In 2013 the master craftsman came out swinging with Passion – his best film since 1992′s Raising Cain. He didn’t break any new ground with Passion or reinvent himself – instead he did what he does best: present a sexy as hell Hitchcockian thriller with style out the ass. Honestly, De Palma hasn’t seemed this confident since the ’80s.Passion is basically his thesis film containing all of the elements that have made him one of the best thriller directors of our time. Pretty much 100 percent of the marketing revolved around the Rachel McAdams/Noomi Rapace lesbian stuff, but that makes up such small part of the film. The rest is classic De Palma: style, sex, doppelgangers, and stylish sexy doppelgangers. The final scene is devilishly comforting for what it is. It’s so great to know De Palma is still out there doing his thing."

"Brian De Palma’s Passion starts out as a fairly flat and faithful adaptation of Alain Corneau’s Love Crime, but then after about half an hour, De Palma loosens up and starts making his most visually expressive and delightfully delirious movie since Femme Fatale. In Passion’s best sequence—and one of the best setpieces of De Palma’s formidable career—a ruthless businesswoman played by Rachel McAdams is stalked by a killer on half the screen, while the other half shows her protégée (Noomi Rapace) watching a performance of The Afternoon Of A Faun. The score rises to a peak, and the dancers look directly into the camera, underlining Passion’s theme of misdirection. De Palma keeps pulling viewers’ eyes back and forth, while heightening the tension to the point of distraction. He also calls back to some of his earliest films, like Dionysus In ’69 and Hi, Mom!, where the theater played a central role. Passionisn’t one of De Palma’s top-tier films, but it’s playful and creative, and the Afternoon Of A Faun sequence is a model of how to layer images and move characters with a multiple frames.

"The Lana Turner Award for Best Breakdown goes to Noomi Rapace in Brian De Palma's preposterous thriller Passion (so preposterous it went straight to DVD in the UK). Noomi, wearing a career girl trouser suit, is checkmated by her scheming boss-cum-love-rival (Rachel McAdams). In the carpark afterwards, she crashes her Peugot into a vending machine, sets off the sprinkler, kicks the car and sinks to the ground, dripping wet and crying hysterically as the camera rises to capture the scene with a crane-shot. Welcome to Planet De Palma, no relation whatsoever to life as we know it, but packed with more barking mad coups de cinéma than the rest of the year's films laid end to end. It also has the best shoes."

AFTER READING WAR SCRIPT, DE PALMA THOUGHT AVRECH HAD RIGHT SENSIBILITY FOR WHAT BECAME 'BODY DOUBLE'

OpEdNews' Joan Brunwasser last week posted an interview with Robert Avrech, screenwriter of Brian De Palma's Body Double. Avrech discussed working with De Palma, and the screenplay he wrote about the Yom Kippur War that led to De Palma hiring him for Body Double.

"I was in Israel in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War," Avrech tells Brunwasser, "and I wrote a pretty powerful script about three women whose husbands were on the front lines. The script cut back and forth between fairly brutal scenes of war, and the more mundane, but tortured lives of the waiting wives. The structure was complex, but it read effortlessly, and the characters were quite vivid. I knew that this script was special. It was just a gut feeling that finally I had written something that was professional and entertaining.

"After I returned to America, I sent the script to every agent in NY, Naturally, my queries were completely ignored. But then, a year later, I got a call from director Brian De Palma, who had read my script--his agent thought it was really good and dropped it on Brian's desk. Brian told me he greatly admired my script. He asked me to come to his office for a meeting.He had no interest in making my script into a movie, but he had an idea for a thriller and wanted me to write it. He thought I had the right sensibility to author the movie he had in mind. Both Brian and I greatly admire Alfred Hitchcock so we were pretty much on the same page aesthetically. That's how I came to write Body Double, a superb thriller that immediately thrust me into the Hollywood limelight."

"ALL GREAT STORIES ARE LOVE STORIES"

Brunwasser asks Avrech whether it is difficult to craft a screenplay based on someone else's idea, and if, being a "young pup," he was intimidated upon meeting with De Palma. Avrech responds, "I have written original scripts (A Stranger Among Us), scripts based on novels (The Devil's Arithmetic), scripts based on non-fiction best sellers (Into Thin Air).

"Writing a screenplay based on an idea by someone else, if the idea is solid, is just another corridor in the (futile) search to craft a flawless, air-tight narrative. What happens with me, and I suspect, all professional screenwriters, is a process of of internalization: The story becomes you.

"Brian De Palma came to me with a very general idea for Body Double. I immediately responded to its Hitchcockian theme of an innocent man drawn into a murder by a beautiful woman (Deborah Shelton), who then sets out to solve the mystery with the aid of a beautiful blonde (Melanie Griffith). Both Brian and I were, and are, huge fans of Alfred Hitchcock's movies. Together we screened Rear Window and Vertigo, and discussed the narrative strategies Hitch used in both films. So in a sense, I was working off of De Palma's ideas of Hitchcock's ideas."

Continuing with Brunwasser, Avrech notes, "One must also keep in mind that movies are a collaborative endeavor. The Hollywood screenwriter works alone only when he's at the keyboard. In truth, a professional screenwriter is always working with a studio/network, a line of producers, a director, and of course, when the film goes into production, his words then become the property of the actors. Obviously, the army of technicians who go into the making a multi-million dollar Hollywood production are vital: the cinematographer, the set designer, the costume designer, the prop people, etc.

"Another issue when working from someone else's idea is there are only 36 plots in the universe of narratives. Thus, every story is a reworking of an old myth or legend that we have seen and heard countless times. The trick is to reinvent these 36 stories in a manner that makes them feel new and original.So, in a very real sense, a screenwriter is always working from a classic idea. And in the end, it's really just one idea: because all great stories are... love stories.

"I was hugely intimidated by Brian De Palma... for about ten minutes. And then, as with all Hollywood celebrities with whom I have worked, he became just another homo sapiens, with all the virtues and flaws one finds in our species."